Share the content on this page

Ten people might eat and sleep in a room such as this. Besides the family and perhaps some relations it was usual to have a lodger to help pay the rent.

Food was cooked on the brick stove which also heated the room. The furniture, white curtains and rag-carpets provide typical furnishings for such a home.

The sewing machine by the window indicates that the wife earned pin money by sewing waistcoats for a tailor.The industrialization of Sweden brought with it the movement of large numbers of people from the countryside into the towns and this had an increasing influence on Swedish society after the middle of the 19th century. In Stockholm alone, the population increased from90 000 to 300 000 people during the period from 1850 to 1900. The enormous increase in population led to a catastrophic lack of housing and many families lived much more primitively than in a home of this sort.